Wine.com smashes US$300 million sales mark in 2020

Proving the pulling power of e-commerce during the pandemic, US online wine retailer Wine.com made US$329m in revenue last year, up 119% on 2019.

For the most recent quarter, ending on 31 December 2020, the website’s revenue was US$111 million, up 64% on the previous year.

Highlights over the last 12 months show a continued acceleration in the company’s growth as wine drinkers engage online in record numbers.

In the last year revenue from StewardShip members – Wine.com’s subscription service offering unlimited free shipping – increased 149% to $189m, with members saving over $30m in shipping costs.

Phones are proving an increasingly popular portal for buying wine, with Wine.com’s sales from smart phones increasing by 111% to $110 million in the past year.

Millennials and generation Z consumers represented 44% of all new Wine.com customers last year, and are the largest and fastest-growing generation of new customers.

Levels of customer engagement on the site were high, with shoppers buying wine from 198 different grape varieties from 52 regions around the world.

Wine.com’s new personalised wine club subscription, Picked by Wine.com, saw 25,817 wines cherry picked by the website’s wine advisors.

“We encountered many challenges during 2020 to keep up with demand, including doubling our workforce in operations and customer service and keeping our people safe during the pandemic,” said Wine.com’s CEO, Rich Bergsund.

“We are grateful to all of our people and partners for the incredible job they did during a very challenging year,” he added.